I went out to my car and now all the speakers, front and rear, are making a whining noise, noticably loud at zero volume. I go to look at my amp (300/4) and the low ohm light is on. The amp was still working when I turned up the volume but distortion was noticable. I unhooked all the speaker wires from the amp and the low ohm light is still on. I turned off the car and back on, maybe to reset the amp but that didn't work. Any ideas on what's going on?
Yes I connected them the same way I had them ran to my RF amp. It was only 2 ohms so it wasn't below what it was capable of handling. I got the amp off of a friend so who knows if something may have been wrong with it before I installed it. It worked ok at first but slowly I guess something ended up going wrong. I'm pretty sure though it is the amp rather than wiring issues now that I've messed around with everything and looked over connections. I'll hook back up the RF amp in the morning and put things back the way they were.
I called a local audio shop this morning who sells JL and they said I could have the amp fixed for $120 plus shipping. I told the guy how I had it wired and what it was doing. He said running it 4 ohm in the front and 2 ohm in the rear shouldn't have hurt anything. However when I get the amp fixed I am just going to run one speaker per channel to be on the safe side. I'm also going to rerun wire to the front speakers through the grommet to make sure there is no issues of wires touching metal or anything. My friend whom I got the amp from kept it in his basement where it sat for a couple years so the guy said moisture could have gotten inside of it, who knows.
I was reading around online and apparently my amp must have a bad output FET. A guy from JL responed to a guy's post and he was saying how $120 is a flat rate that covers all internal repairs. He was saying sometimes JL comes out good on the deal and other times they don't, so that seems fair. It still sucks though to spend more money on an amp I just purchased..
So I put the RF amp back in my car and hooked up everything up the way I had it before and everything is working again. No noise, no distortion. However, I can't believe the difference in the sound quality vs the JL. I don't know if it's the extra 25 rms per each channel the JL gives the subs or just the quality of the amp overall. The RF just doesn't sound as "alive" as the JL did and at louder volume levels, the RF amp sounds as if the music is more meshed together rather than clear and seperate. Playing the JL amp, even at high volume levels, highs were clear and distinct. So I guess I'm going to fork out the money to have the amp fixed after all, perhaps next week.
So I was thinking about maybe upgrading the speakers in my car. Anyone have experience with the JL component and/or 6x9 series speakers? Any better choices? I'm looking for good sound quality and 75 rms power rating. I currently have Pioneer REV series components and 6x9's. How are these compared with the JL line? When I first purchased these I compared these to Alpine and RF series speakers and to me the Pioneers sounded better.
No I'm thinking it's just the sound quality of the amp. I'm aware of setting gains and how it should and shouldn't sound according to gain settings. If the gain was set improperly it would begin having distortion in the sound a little after half volume and up. It isn't that its muffled and all jumbled together, it's just not as crisp and precious as the JL amp.